The moment he stepped onto the sand he felt that what he was doing would prove futile, even ridiculous, though there was nobody but himself to find it so. Nevertheless he made his way to the water’s edge, inhaling deeply the seaweed-tinged air. He had been brought here before, by what he wasn’t sure, and now he was asking the place itself to reveal to him at least a whisper of what it had all meant, why it had happened the way it did, even though he knew that no such revelation would be forthcoming.
He went down to where he’d dragged the man from the water, judging from the landmarks in the distance: the pier, the beach lot, the lifeguard tower. Any trace of activity had already been erased, even the deep tracks of the lifeguard’s pickup had disappeared into the random scalloping of beach sand. If only he could so easily wipe the event from his memory, he thought, while also castigating himself for thinking so. He had saved a man’s life—had done the ultimate good deed—shouldn’t he want to remember it? But that was the distance between the thing itself and its definition: he couldn’t reduce the former to the latter.
The scene revealed nothing of what had happened. The event lived on only in his mind, or his mind and the swimmer’s, whoever and wherever he was. Jeff paced at the waterline, then made his way back across the sand to the beach lot, feeling unfulfilled and confused.
Crossing the pedestrian bridge, he watched the cars pass underneath. It was rush hour. From his vantage he looked down into their windshields, a parade of strangers. He was struck by their people-ness, by their unique individual existences, doled out into each car.
Their faces revealed nothing. As if they were posing for passport photos. Or sitting in front of computer screens. He thought of, then pushed from his mind, the swimmer’s unconscious face. Would he have been released from the hospital already? Or would he still be there, intravenous antibiotics trickling into his veins, along with an opiate for the pain of the broken ribs, ribs broken by the hard heel of a helping hand?
He would still be in the hospital, yes, wife, or friend, or sibling by his side, swallowed up by the hospital bed, heart monitor beeping, skin flushed and pink, hair dry but messy, like a baby after a bath. But what about his state of mind? Was he in shock? At peace? How much of what had happened remained in his memory? Was there a gap? The smooth cold ocean, the gray dawn, the repetitive stroke, breathing and kicking and pulling in his regular rhythm, a phrase repeating in his head to keep everything synchronized, as to a beat; then as if waking from deep sleep, hard sand and dry air where water had been a moment before, muscles weak, rawness in his nose and throat, retching, searing pain in his chest. The red outline of a lifeguard asking questions. What is your name? What day of the week is it? The brusque ministrations of the medics, the ride across the sand, another ride to the hospital… What about the way he tried to raise his arm while looking at Jeff? Did he remember that? What had he been trying to do? Signal? Beckon? Acknowledge? Thank? Even if everything that had happened at the beach was a blur, or a blank, Jeff had no doubt that somewhere in that man lingered a remnant of that canceled gesture.
7
The lifeguard’s wool blanket remained in the bathroom for another week, its odor of wet wool, seawater, and mildew diffusing throughout the house, though he was inured to it, spending most of the time indoors, in a depressive funk he attributed in part to the loss of G, watching any movie he could find without a romantic plot or subplot, eating his way through the canned food in the actor’s pantry. A half dozen soups, refried beans, lentils, garbanzos, diced tomatoes…
At the end of the week he ordered pizza. The delivery guy asked Jeff about the smell. He retrieved the blanket from the corner of the bathroom and washed it in the machine on cold. He set the dryer to delicate. When it was dry, he folded it neatly in thirds and slid it into a paper grocery bag.
He parked the Volvo on the pier and made his way down to the lifeguard headquarters, an industrial box tucked between the pier and an exercise area on the beach. Behind the building was a walled-off yard for equipment, where he thought he might enter, but it was locked up. He found a door on the side of the building, beige, with rust and paint bubbles at the edges. He knocked, but got no answer. He tried the knob and found himself standing in a nondescript hallway, fluorescent lights stuck to the ceiling. Laughter filtered down from above, coming from the stairs to the right. He made his way up quietly, listening to the lifeguards talk. One was calling the other a racist, and the other said he called them like he saw them, and there was more laughter, which stopped abruptly when Jeff arrived at the top of the stairs. The room had windows all across the front and part of the sides, with a view of the beach to the south of the pier. Lifeguard Dennis sat leaning back in a wheeled desk chair. Also seated in similar chairs were a wiry tanned young man with a small judgy mouth—a prototypical eighties movie jerk—and an older guard, not quite Dennis’s age, balding and wearing a shit-eating grin. All three wore red jackets and red shorts.
Jeff apologized for interrupting, held up the grocery bag, said he just wanted to return the blanket he’d borrowed.
He hadn’t come in with a plan, but he had hoped he might at least be able to ask a few questions of a receptionist, maybe get a name for the man he’d rescued. Confronted with these three men, bursting with convivial bravado, he lost his nerve. The jerk-looking lifeguard nodded at a countertop to suggest Jeff set the blanket there and leave them to continue their conversation.
Dennis asked him if he was the kid who had helped pull a swimmer out of the water recently. Jeff said he was and that he wasn’t a kid. Dennis told the other lifeguards what had happened, and any sign of jesting or exclusion disappeared from their faces. Dennis asked Jeff if he understood what he’d done, how exceedingly rare it was that something like that happened, how decisive and ballsy he must have been to do what he did. The other lifeguards nodded in agreement. If it hadn’t been for Jeff, Dennis said, as he had said on the beach, but this time with more feeling, the guy wouldn’t have made it.
“He’s okay?” Jeff asked.
“Last I heard, yeah,” Dennis said, “though his ribs might be hurting a little.”
“If they don’t crack, they don’t come back,” said the balding lifeguard.
“Is that a thing?” the jerk asked.
“Should be.”
Dennis offered to walk Jeff out. On the way down, Jeff asked how he could be sure the swimmer was actually okay.
“Wife sent a fruit basket,” he said.
“Married, then,” Jeff said.
“Happy to pass on your info to him.”
Jeff hadn’t thought of this possibility. He imagined Dennis calling and telling the man that someone else had been involved in his rescue. What if the man didn’t remember him? He imagined waiting for the man to contact him, not knowing whether he ever would.
“I don’t know,” Jeff said.
“Damn good fruit basket.”
“I’m not sure,” Jeff said.
Lifeguard Dennis gave him a probing look and asked him to follow. They went down the corridor away from the door he’d come in, to a windowless storage room. Dennis pulled open a file cabinet, riffled through papers, and pulled out an incident report. He handed it to Jeff.
“That’s your guy there. I’ll leave it up to you.”
Francis Arsenault, with an address on Mandeville Canyon Road. Jeff committed it to memory and handed back the report.
Dennis put it back in the file cabinet, closed the drawer, and looked at him seriously.
“I never showed that to you,” he said.
He escorted Jeff out of headquarters, through a garage and into the walled-off courtyard filled with pickup trucks, paddle boards, Jet Skis, and other equipment. They came to a human-size door cut into the large vehicle gate, and Dennis thanked him for returning the blanket.
“Nobody returns the blankets,” Dennis said.
8